Location

Description

Our regularly scheduled monthly meetings are on the 3rd WEDNESDAY of each month.

October 28, 2013 local Watauga citizens began collecting membership commitments to establish a local NAACP Chapter.

February 15, 2014 our Watauga NAACP Branch was officially chartered by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. We were largely inspired by the North Carolina NAACP and Forward Together Moral Movement beginning in the spring of 2013, and we have participated in many of the demonstrations in Raleigh. We are committed to making a difference here in Watauga County to enhance dignity, democracy, and freedom; and to eliminate race-based discrimination. We support equal status and equal rights for all; and we stand against all forms of injustice.

Many are surprised at the proportion of white faces in our NAACP Branch, but the most recent US Census Bureau data indicate Watauga County is 95% white. Many of us disturbed by actions of the NC legislature these last couple years, have been inspired to action by a renewal of fusion politics through the NAACP NC's Moral Movement. The birth of this new Branch is creating new opportunities for building more diverse local relationships across groups that haven't always mixed. As NC government enacts laws harming yet more and more of the population, people are finding more common ground and more strength in coalitions.

Since it's founding by a multi-racial group of activists in 1909, the NAACP has worked for the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination. Even during periods of vicious violence and overt racial hostility, NAACP leaders and members have steadfastly and courageously kept to nonviolent means to advocate for greater justice through marches, the press, the ballot, lobbying, and litigation. For history of the NAACP, click here and click here.

While issues of racial injustice remain central to the NAACP, the organization takes very seriously its mission statement to seek equality of rights of all persons and is a powerful advocate for people who are marginalized. Marriage equality is another issue of civil rights more recently embraced, with the National NAACP Board passing a formal resolution in support of marriage equality in May 2012. The NAACP is also very concerned with rights and protections for immigrants and undocumented persons, people without healthcare, people living in poverty, women's rights, public education, voting rights, and environmental justice.